TEXPERS releases enemies list

Whatever happened to the notion of nonpartisan objectivity from official government offices?

Are bureaucrats, while working on the taxpayers' clock, really supposed to target private citizens as "hostile threats?" That's a scary notion for any believer in individual liberty. And yet, that's exactly what's happened in Texas, where administrators of state and local government workers' defined-benefit pension system have lashed out against anyone who's publicly worried that taxpayers might soon struggle to keep up with mounting pension costs for government workers.

As is the case in Nevada and across the country, Texas' defined-benefit system is drastically underfunded and faces a growing unfunded liability. Because of this, taxpayers' annual required contributions to the pension system are increasing with each passing year. Some cities and and counties around the nation are seeing their annual retirement contributions rise to well over 20 percent of their annual budget, crowding out their ability to provide critical public services.

That's precisely why there's a growing recognition that defined-benefits pension plans for government workers should be converted into either 401(k)-style retirement accounts typical in the private sector or into some form of hybrid plan, as Utah has done. (NPRI has recommended a Utah-style hybrid for Nevada.) This change is intended to protect both taxpayers and government workers who would gain additional flexibility and greater assurance that their pension promises could be upheld. In particular, a Utah-style hybrid or defined-contribution plan would make public-sector employment more attractive for talented, young professionals.

And, yet, in face of these substantive, rational observations, some groups of ill-informed bureaucrats have reflexively attacked reformers in order to protect the status quo while ignoring the potential benefits to government workers of a defined-contribution or hybrid alternative.

This is the most brazen of such attacks to date and I certainly hope it's not a harbinger of things to come. To its credit, NV PERS has yet to resort to these tactics, but you can see from the presentation developed by TEXPERS below that bureaucrats in Texas are explicitly targeting private citizens and groups as "hostile threats."

Geoffrey Lawrence is the Director of Research and Legislative Affairs at NPRI. Geoffrey is a frequent commentator on public policy in print, radio and television news in Nevada and his work appears regularly in publications around the state and the nation. He is noted for having developed comprehensive proposals for reform of the state revenue structure, budgeting methods and spending habits.